'Year after year the flowers look alike, year after year the people are not the same' is Liu Xiyi's famous couplet.
Tips
culture
The couplet comes from his 《代悲白头翁》, 'Lament for an old white-haired man', and the second line mirrors the first: the flowers that come back the same each spring are set against the people who look at them and change.
history
A Tang story says his uncle 宋之问, a court poet, begged him for the couplet, and when Liu refused had him smothered with sacks of earth. He did die young, but the tale is probably invented.
